As Swann smoked his pipe and relived his past, Sergeant John Parker, after briefing Constable Evans about the little job over the road, put on his bowler hat and a lightweight cape, for it had begun to drizzle, and left the police station by a concealed side entrance to make his way up Great William Street and then down the tow-path of the canal to the bustling canal basin where Cox’s Timber Yard was, as ever, a hive of activity. He then made his way along the pathway by the edge of the river to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre where he’d planned to meet his wife, Ann, in The Shakespeare Rooms for tea.

John Parker had met Ann Browning soon after he found lodgings in her widowed mother’s large old house in Old Town in the summer of 1879, where he was given a first floor room that overlooked Holy Trinity Church, a view that gave the young policeman some serenity in an increasingly hectic and violent life.

And it had been in the churchyard of Holy Trinity that John Parker had first seen Ann as she placed flowers on a small memorial to her father, Major Marvis Browning, who had died earlier that year at the Battle of Kambula in the last weeks of the Zulu Wars.

Parker didn’t know she was the daughter of his landlady – although he’d heard she had a daughter – no, all he could see was a young woman who could be no more than twenty, with dark auburn hair that glowed healthily in the dying sunlight of a late summer’s day, a body that was graceful beneath her full black dress, and a face of such beauty and radiance that when she turned to look at him his heart turned somersaults to see such a fine mouth and nose and blue eyes that burned deep into his soul. Detective Sergeant John Parker, like his boss all those years before in India, suddenly, and completely fell head over heels in love.

Ann Browning smiled.

” I think you must be our new lodger, sir?”

” And I should have known, by your beauty alone, dear lady, that you are your mother’s daughter.”

” I am not at all sure, sir, that you should be talking to me like that in a churchyard?”

” I’m sure God looks kindly upon a man in love?”

” Indeed, I’m sure he must. But with whom are you in love?”

” With you. Who else?”

” Indeed I see no one else, but how can you be in love with me, we have only just met?”

” In the same way that you are in love with me.”

” You presume, sir.”

” Do I?”

” I feel you must….”

” Do I?”

John Parker had then apologised most profusely for breaking the unwritten rules of 1870s social intercourse. But broken they had been and the two young people were now able to let events take their course, which, in December 1881, culminated in their marriage at Holy Trinity, with a scrubbed and brushed Swann acting as Parker’s Best Man, who, with the beautiful Margaret Scott on his arm, felt more like the father of the groom.

After the marriage the young couple settled themselves comfortably into Mrs Browning’s elegant early 19th century home. Then, in January of 1882, Ann knew she was pregnant.

Ann Parker was now sitting in The Shakespeare Rooms waiting for her husband.

This once famous, but long gone room, was elegantly decorated with dark blue wallpaper that was enlivened with small silver stars. Around the walls were very stylised drawings of Shakespearean characters, who all looked as if they had come out of an illustrated copy of The Arabian Nights, which gave the room a very romantic middle-eastern feel that was enhanced by the huge entrance door that could easily have been taken from a crusader castle. Round wooden tables – each covered with a crisp white linen tablecloth – occupied the centre of the room, and around each table were placed four small oak chairs, each with carvings that again suggested they might have been brought back from Arabia.

And on this rather drizzly day in March 1882, all the tables were occupied by respectable townspeople enjoying the splendour and amenities of their town’s new theatre.

Smaller tables were placed at the windows around the semi-circle of the room, each with two chairs; and it was, sitting at one of these tables, that Ann Parker enjoyed a splendid view southward toward Holy Trinity, a view that brought back such lovely, happy memories. But apart from the starlit wallpaper – and the feeling that you were at the top of some splendid castle – one of the main features of The Shakespeare Rooms was its long serving bar – situated alongside the wall opposite the windows – which was a copper and glass affair that stretched the entire width of the room, with its interior lit cleverly by concealed gas jets that made the hammered copper and glass reflect the sumptuous array of cakes and pastries displayed therein. Behind the bar a dozen or more matching copper and glass shelves (again lit by gas jets) climbed to the high ceiling, upon which were displayed a huge assortment of liquors, beers and cordials. To each side of these shelves were narrow racks filled with the very best the vineyards of the continent of Europe could offer.

Five waiters and five waitresses – all dressed in black, with starched white aprons that reached to the floor – served pots of tea, coffee, hot chocolate, sandwiches, cakes, and tall sundae glasses of ice-cream with preserved fruit.

In a corner, on a slightly raised dais, was a grand piano, at which a dark haired moustachioed young man was sitting playing a selection of Viennese Waltzes and some of his own compositions, one of which, Rosemary, Ann Parker liked particularly. It was a charming little tune which, much later during the Great War, became something of hit for a much older Sir Edward Elgar.

In other words, The Shakespeare Rooms was a civilised meeting place for civilised people and Sergeant John Parker hated it, considering it both pretentious and the only place in town where you couldn’t get a decent cup of coffee, and John Parker knew his coffee. But because his darling Ann loved it so much he kept his feelings to himself, and drank tea.

Entering the main entrance of the Memorial Theatre in Waterside, and climbing the stairs immediately to the right of that entrance, Parker made his way across the enclosed Venetian style bridge to the main building and then up a further flight of broad marble stairs that brought him to the aforementioned doorway that led into The Shakespeare Rooms. He was met by the establishment’s manager, Thomas Lawrence.

” Ah, Sergeant Parker, your good lady wife awaits in her usual place.”

” Thanks, Tom.”

Parker left his cape and hat with the young fair-haired Lawrence and quickly made his way across the room to where his wife was sitting.

” Hello, darling, sorry I’m late.” Parker kissed his wife and sat down opposite her.

” Something crop-up again, Sergeant Parker?”

” Hmm, you could say that. Swann has a hunch. How are you feeling?”

” Pregnant.”

Several people looked around at this usually unspoken word.

” Will it be a boy or girl?” asked Parker.

” A girl.”

” How can you tell?”

” She is small and content. A boy would be like you, restless.”

In December 1857 Swann had returned from Madras with news of the Indian Mutiny to find the doctor’s house burned to the ground, with the doctor hacked to pieces upon the steps that led to his veranda. A little later Swann found his beloved Mary violently slashed open, with their unborn child, a girl, ripped from her womb, to be thrown lifeless into the dust. After what seemed like a million lifetimes Swann howled in grief like a mad dog wishing only to be dead, praying for the murderers to return to take his own life, a life that was no longer worth living.

To Be Continued…

Read Chapters 1 – 16